Starting a career in the theatre today. Between strong personalisation and social game[Débuter au théâtre aujourd'hui. Entre personnalisation et jeu social affirmé]

The numerous and diverse debates that took place at the end of the past century show the very strong internal tensions that structure the functioning of the theatre in France and, consequently, the ways to start a career there. In accordance with the originality convention which is at the very base of modern art, the desire for individualisation and personalisation of one's professional career gets in tension with today's very strong structure of the theatre world. As a result deep breaks appear between each person‘s position and situation. In fact, a complex social mediation game is largely involved to determine the talent of an artist or the quality of a work, while beginners go on attaching too much importance to the research and creation phase. However, they will soon be confronted with particularly intensive selection and qualification tests to produce and diffuse/ disseminate their proposals. The question then arises of our collective ability to overcome the recurrent oppositions that divide the theatre world and find the possible ways of starting a career in it.